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British Library, Add MS 47891. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 353–355.Dating note: In his letter dated 1 March 1804 (Letter 905), Southey tells Danvers that he has begun a letter to King. Therefore this letter was started on (or before) 1 March but not completed until 5 March.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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May it please your Majesty
It does not please me that in the course of six months you have never written me one letter – & if I had not a favour to ask by way of atonement I should have waited some time longer before I had written you another.
You know by Danvers how it is settled that Madoc is to be published
next winter.
What I aim at (besides making the book sell, which prints do by making it expensive, for the rich think whatever is
dear must be good) – is to elucidate the costume, the antiquities, & the natural history of the poem, so as to make a dull eye
see, what a dull imagination could never comprehend. Thus for the first vignette I shall have a ship – copied from William
Conquerors tapestry.two four in Nicholsons Journal,
For the size let it be a fit vignette or tail piece for a common quarto, such as the great half-read which tho an
uncommon poem, is of the common size,
I do not ask you for any thing more, but if you have any studies of tropical scenery which you think will suit this purpose, I know they will be better than any I can get elsewhere, & you know I shall be very thankful for your help. A group of cocoa trees on the beach, or of mangoes, any thing of the kind characteristic of the country.
Clarkson (who has brought back with him a due share of admiration for
his surgeon as well as his physician) put me upon a plan of making something like soda water which did not succeed at all. I put
the acid which Danvers sent me
This place has agreed with me unaccountably well, but I am by no means disposed to fix here, the distance from
London is too inconvenient, a parcel by the waggon is a month reaching me. It is certain that I must draw nearer London so as to
be within reach of the museum,rs Fenwickxxx <severe> & unmerciful a lecture, & made the
philosophicide (as he calls him) look so utterly contemptible, that in the morning his heart relented, & he thought himself in
decency bound to write an letter of extenuation & contrition – very foolishly as the upshot proved, for the ugly-nosed metapothecary with his usual Godwinism confessed afterward to Lamb that he had provoked him because his wife twitted him for being afraid of Mr Coleridge! So Jerry took heart upon the occasion –
& actually went from the Temple to Somers Town to fetch Mrs Sneakalbum græcum.